Bayou Hero (6 page)

But the admiral hadn’t been murdered because he was a good officer. His death had had nothing to do with the navy and everything to do with being a privileged man who felt entitled to whatever he wanted.

So what had he wanted that led to his death?

* * *

Alia was pulling out of her driveway Tuesday morning at a quarter to eight, with an oversize travel mug of coffee in the cup holder, a .40 caliber pistol and a Taser in their holsters, and a cream cheese–slathered bagel in her left hand. It was going to be another hot and muggy day, and she expected to spend little, if any, time in the office, so she’d dressed accordingly in a sleeveless blouse and skirt with a belt to hold her badge and weapons. A jacket, to cover the weapons, sat on the passenger seat.

The neighborhood where she lived consisted of three main streets: Serenity, Divinity and Trinity. It had gone through several phases in its history, from upper middle class to mostly slum, then back to respectability. Though some houses remained shuttered and decaying, in the past ten years new owners had given most of them new life. The gangbangers had been forced out, the local church was flourishing, and the neighborhood had its own market, preschool and two restaurants. They hadn’t had a violent crime in their few blocks in three years.

Alia had talked to Jimmy while dressing, arranging to meet midmorning to trade notes from yesterday. First, though, she was going to surprise Miss Viola and find out if the old lady was any more forthcoming about the Jackson family without a Jackson in the room.

With the radio providing background noise, Alia took a bite of bagel, savored the oniony dough and the creamy cheese and wished she’d tossed a handful of candy bars into her bag. Breakfast, no matter what it was, was always more satisfying with chocolate.

Her mind wandered as she drove, mostly to the whereabouts of Camilla Kingsley. Landry had said she’d had no choice when he’d left home.
He never gave any of us a choice
,
he’d muttered.
What about now? At her age, had she earned the right to make a few decisions for herself, such as this trip out of town? When she heard the news of her husband’s death, would she return home? Was she even alive to hear the news?

Maybe Miss Viola would tell her more than she’d volunteered yesterday.

The Fulsom home looked even statelier today. The white columns and siding gleamed in the morning sun. The dew-dampened grass seemed greener, the pastels of the flowers overflowing the beds softer. Alia parked in the driveway, in the dappled shade of an oak, got out and glanced around. A tall wrought iron fence circled the backyard, and the flowering vines that grew over it blocked even a glimpse inside while perfuming the air with their sweet jasmine.

A dog barked across the street, and a lawn mower sounded nearby. A woman sat on a porch swing—mother or nanny—while a small girl played with dolls. Life as usual.

Alia climbed the steps, weaving past a pair of antique rockers, bypassing a breakfast table and two chairs, reaching the door. She would bet every area of the house, inside and out, offered little seating areas for private conversations, both good and bad.

At the door, she pressed the bell, listening to its deep tones echoing inside. She pressed her ear close to the wood of the door, straining for any answering response. No footsteps. No call for housekeeper Molly to answer the door with a plate of her famous desserts in hand.

Alia moved to the right, sliding behind a settee to look inside the nearest window of the library. Fingers cupped to the glass to deflect reflections, she noted the old oak library table, the chair where she’d sat, the shelves she’d faced. Her gaze swept to the left, through the open doors into the entryway: elegant stairs sweeping to the second floor, a painting of a Fulsom ancestor on the wall above a demilune table, a priceless chandelier casting more shadows than it banished...and a small pink-clad shape on the floor.

Her breath caught in her chest. The form was thin, tiny, the pink a robe, one slipper to match, mussed white hair. The body lay mostly on a rug at the foot of the stairs, but the pale, frail hands were on the polished floor, fingers spread wide, the ruby ring catching a ray of light.

“Aw, Miss Viola,” she whispered. “Damn...”

Turning her back on the window and retreating a few steps, she called Jimmy, then her supervisor. Maybe they would be lucky, and Miss Viola’s death would be accidental. The old lady was eighty-one. Maybe she’d fallen, her heart had stopped or she’d suffered a stroke. Maybe it had just been her time. Maybe it wasn’t related, just purely coincidental to the other murders.

But if they weren’t lucky, the body count had just reached five. Were there more deaths to come?

Letting the scene process in the back of her mind, Alia began a walk around the house, looking for any signs of forced entry. Locating an unsecured gate into the backyard, she went through it, cell phone in one hand, pistol in the other.

She’d expected small elaborate gardens, an enormous swimming pool, a cabana or two, sprawling seating for fifty, a tiled or wood platform to support Miss Viola’s favorite string quartet or for speech-giving at political fund-raisers.

The space was lovely, but beyond a modest red-brick patio down a few steps from the veranda, it was all garden: vegetable, shade, orchard and flowers. Standing on the patio, she identified tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupes, herbs, lettuce, cabbage, an entire rainbow of bell peppers—enough produce to stock the market at the entrance to the Serenity neighborhood. What did an elderly woman want with such a large garden?

One of the doors leading into the house abruptly opened, and she spun around, bringing up her pistol.

“Don’t shoot.” Jimmy raised both hands in surrender. “I’ve got too much on my schedule to die today.”

Grimacing, she holstered the pistol. She’d made it through their marriage without killing him, though he’d dearly deserved it on multiple occasions. Why do it now?

He waited, holding the door open. As usual, he wore a white shirt, black trousers and black tie, and she knew from experience that the black suit coat was in the car.

“Do you still own five white shirts, five black suits and five black ties?” she asked as she passed him, entering the coolness of the mudroom.

“Do you remember the stuff you get into on this job? Besides, sometimes I’m tired—”

“Or hung over.”

“—and not really focused on choosing clothes. This way I always match.” His tone turned more serious as he closed and relocked the door. “You saw the old lady?”

“Only from outside.”

“Doesn’t look any better inside, but at least it’s not our concern.”

Alia followed him through a kitchen she would sell Jimmy’s soul for, then into the broad hallway. Yesterday she had stood right where Miss Viola’s head rested,

She look so small and helpless. It was hard to imagine that less than twenty-four hours ago, they’d sat in the library and talked, that Miss Viola had extended her hospitality for another visit. And now...

Giving herself a shake, Alia took in the scene, so very similar to the day before. No sign of a break-in or a struggle, no sign of a burglary that had gone wrong. Like the admiral, there were too many valuable items just the right size for slipping into a pocket or a bag, including the huge ruby ring on Miss Viola’s left hand.

Natural causes
, she reminded herself. Not every death was a homicide, not all circumstances suspicious.

The coroner’s assistant glanced up from his position next to the body. “Time of death was between midnight and 3:00 a.m. Head trauma. Apparently, she tripped coming down the steps. Lost her shoe there—” he pointed to the missing slipper lying crookedly halfway up the stairs “—got tangled in her robe and took a tumble.”

...the interesting parts are upstairs, and I don’t go up there anymore. Broken hip. Last year. I haven’t been upstairs since.

“No,” Alia murmured, then repeated in a stronger voice, “No. She didn’t fall down the stairs.”

“Why do you say that?” Jimmy asked.

“She broke her hip last year. Her kids fixed her a suite on this floor, at the back of the house. She didn’t go upstairs.”

“Maybe she was home alone, needed something, thought one time wouldn’t hurt,” the coroner’s investigator suggested.

“No,” Alia repeated. “She would have waited. If it was important, she would have called someone. She’s got family and friends everywhere. And she never would have tried it in those slippy little shoes and a robe that’s just waiting to trip her.”

The men exchanged looks, then Jimmy asked the question that apparently they were all thinking. “Why would someone want to kill an eighty-year-old lady who lives in her house, grows her garden, goes to church and wouldn’t hurt a fly?”

“This particular eighty-one-year-old lady is related by marriage to the Jackson family. She knew all of Camilla’s and Jeremiah’s history. Miss Viola probably knew everyone in the neighborhood, city, parish and state who had a feud with the admiral, when and what about. I’m guessing she knew the secrets people wanted to stay buried.”

“Well, hell. So odds of this being coincidence...”

“I thought you don’t believe in coincidence.”

Scowling, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t. I believe God’s got a wicked sense of humor and Karma’s a fire-breathing bitch.”

The men laughed. Alia patiently pointed out, “You’ve got to admit—you tested their patience.”

“Maybe. A little.” Turning back to the other investigators, he shrugged. “Let’s treat this like a crime scene until we find out cause of death for sure.”

Alia’s gaze went past him to the tall windows across the room that overlooked the driveway. The car parking next to hers was middle-of-the-road average, old enough to lay some claim on vintage and showing the scars and dings of a lot of miles. She’d ridden in it for a few minutes yesterday and had figured she would see it again. Just not here. Not now.

“Family,” she muttered to Jimmy as she headed out the door. She met Landry and Mary Ellen at the far end of the porch, only a few steps from his vehicle. “You can’t be here,” she said firmly, blocking their way, realizing she would have to break the news, wishing she’d sent Jimmy instead. She hadn’t had to make many death notifications, and she never knew what to say. Sweet-talker Jimmy always managed to find just the right words.

“B-but Miss Viola... All th-these police c-c-cars... What’s happened?” Mary Ellen didn’t look as if she’d rested last night. Her eyes were bloodshot, dark circles underneath them, and her chin was wobbling now. “Where is Miss Viola? Is she all right? We’ve got to see her. We’ve got to—Landry!”

There were no circles around his eyes, no sign that a single tear had fallen. He was dressed more formally today, in gray trousers and a blue button-down, with that same antique watch on his left wrist. A family heirloom, likely from the Landry side of the family. Had it come from the Jacksons, it would likely be buried in silt at the bottom of the Mississippi.

His mouth was hard, the look in his eyes even more so. “What happened?” His voice was low, soft as granite, devoid of emotion but, conversely, all the more touching for the lack of it.

“We don’t know yet. Miss Viola...” Alia looked away, noticing in some distant portion of her brain that the mother and child across the street had gone inside, then met Landry’s gaze. “She’s gone.”

She didn’t have to say more because a wail escaped Mary Ellen an instant before she swooned into her brother’s arms.

Chapter 4

L
andry hadn’t shed a single tear or felt a moment’s regret for his father’s death. He hadn’t worried overly much about his mother’s whereabouts. But as he clung to Mary Ellen, keeping her limp body from collapsing to the ground, grief rose inside him.

Miss Viola had been like a grandmother to him. She was the only person in his entire life who’d taken a chance on him, who’d stood up to his father for him. She had protected him and Mary Ellen when their own mother wouldn’t, had made it possible for both of them to escape the hell their house had become.

“Was it—” He couldn’t finish the question. His voice was too husky, his throat too clogged.

“It appears she fell down the stairs.”

He began shaking his head before she finished. “She didn’t use the stairs—hadn’t been up there since she came home from the rehab hospital last year.”

Alia nodded as if she already knew that. “We’ll know more once the coroner has completed the autopsy.”

Mary Ellen stirred, and he glanced down at her, freeing one hand to pull his cell from his pocket. “Can you call my brother-in-law and ask him to come get her?”

Alia took the phone, scrolled through the directory, then moved back down the porch, her voice covering the distance in little more than a murmur.

Landry helped Mary Ellen to the nearest chair, crouching in front of her. Tears seeping from her eyes, she plaintively asked, “What’s going on, Landry? First Mama, then the admiral, and now Miss Viola. Why? She never hurt anyone. Everyone loved her.”

He noticed she didn’t include their father in those sentiments. Jeremiah had hurt everyone, and Landry couldn’t think of one person who’d honestly, wholeheartedly loved the bastard. “It was probably an accident,” he said, though the words felt like a lie. Maybe it was paranoia, with his life being all disrupted the past day, but there was an icy place inside him that suspected the worst. He continued for Mary Ellen’s sake, though. “Maybe her heart...”

Mary Ellen smiled through her tears. “You know she never had a thing wrong with her besides that blasted hip.”

He managed his own faint smile. It was true, and Miss Viola had been damned proud of it. No high blood pressure or cholesterol or blood sugar, no weight problems or allergies or senilities, none of the afflictions people her age tended to have. Just a few creaky joints and one blasted hip.

My doctor told me that one in four people die within the first year after breaking their hip
, she’d told him not long after her own accident.
I don’t plan on being that one.

She’d made it a little more than a year.

Alia joined them again, offering his phone. His fingers brushed hers when he took it, but the only thing he noticed was that hers were warm, while his felt so damn cold.

“Your husband will be here in a few minutes,” she said to Mary Ellen. “Can I get you a glass of water or anything?”

“No, thank you. I’ll be fine.” Mary Ellen’s voice wobbled on the last word. “Who found Miss Viola? Today is Molly’s day off.”

“I did.” Discomfort spread across Alia’s face, and she avoided glancing at Landry. “I came to ask her a few more questions.”

Come to question Miss Viola without him present
,
Landry thought with a scowl.
Hoping to get the old lady to let something slip, to trip her into saying something today she wouldn’t normally give voice to, most especially with me right there.

“Oh, my Lord, to fall like that, all alone. That just breaks my heart.” His sister raised her watery gaze to Alia. “How long did she lie there? Was she in pain? Did she try to get to the phone? Brett and Mimi—those are her children—they tried to get her to wear one of those emergency call devices, but she was too stubborn. She said when it was her time, it was her time, and she would happily go.”

“I really don’t know, Mrs. Davison. Once we get some answers, we’ll share them with you.”

Mary Ellen nodded, satisfied for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Brett and Mimi... Has anyone told them yet?”

“The police department will notify them if they haven’t already.”

Landry thought he detected the smallest suggestion of impatience in Alia’s voice. She’d come to pump an old lady for gossip, found a suspicious death instead, and then had to break the news to family members. He would bet she didn’t get stuck with breaking bad news very often. He would bet it was one of the few jobs she didn’t excel at.

A squeal on the street drew their attention that way as Scott parked behind Landry’s car.
A few minutes
,
Alia had said. An extravagant guess, considering Scott’s nerves were twisted nearly as tight as Mary Ellen’s. Stunned and pale, he greeted Landry and Alia with troubled looks. Mumbling something about
too much
and
doctor
and
sedatives
, he hustled Mary Ellen into the car, then jumped in himself, backed up into the drive across the street and headed home.

“Do you mind going out back with me and answering some questions?”

Landry gazed at the half dozen or more chairs scattered along the gallery, every one of them with access to the open door and the front windows. Without knowing anything more about the way Miss Viola had died, he knew he didn’t want to see her while officers walked around her, talked about her and, eventually, zipped her into a bag and hauled her off.

He went to the back gate, wiggled his fingers inside the heavy growth until he found the key hidden there, then undid the lock. He turned away from the patio and led her back to the twin chairs hidden from sight by the rows of corn.

“Why did she grow such a big garden?” Apparently Special Agent Kingsley preferred to open with the least important of all the questions at her disposal.

“To give away.”

“Her family and friends must have been pleased.”

“Not to them. Miss Viola figured they could buy their organically grown stuff at their trendy farmers’ markets like everyone else. She donated hers to soup kitchens and to markets in lower-income neighborhoods.”

She’d done so much more: paid medical bills, made house repairs, provided single mothers with cars to get to their jobs and single fathers with after-school help. She’d bought uniforms to outfit a dozen school classes, stocked preschools with everything, located jobs, provided counseling and made life better.

She’d done enough good to get herself into heaven three or four times over, while there wasn’t enough good possible to keep Jeremiah from hell. And if he had in any way contributed to her death, if whatever he’d done that led to his own murder had come back on her...

“Where were you between midnight and three?” Alia asked.

The question was perfunctory, lacking even a fraction of the interest she’d shown when she asked him the same thing with regard to his father. Because she believed he was capable of killing Jeremiah but not Miss Viola?

Score a point for her, because she was right.

“The bar closed at 3:00 a.m. I cleaned up and was in bed by 3:30.” He checked the time on his great-grandfather Landry’s Patek Philippe. He and Mary Ellen had had an appointment fifteen minutes ago with the funeral director to plan Jeremiah’s funeral. Landry hadn’t wanted to go at all, and now he would be going alone. What did he know about planning a funeral? He’d be better off trusting the funeral director to make the right choices.

Now it was his turn to ask a question. “You were just here yesterday. Why did you come back this morning?”

Alia crossed her legs. Once again her hair was pulled straight back from her face in a ridiculously tight braid, but she’d traded the drab blue suit for a tan shirt and brown skirt. She still looked all business, but at least the clothes had a little style, and the open-toed shoes with straps around her slender ankles showed off her legs well.

“I thought she was a little too careful with her responses yesterday.”

“You thought she was telling you what I wanted her to.”

Alia nodded. The sunlight catching in her hair gave it a high sheen. “I thought she might be more comfortable speaking with me about your family if you weren’t present.”

Tension eased from his shoulders. “You would have been disappointed. Miss Viola was one of the great repositories of information in this town. She observed carefully, asked questions discreetly and shared judiciously. People confided in her because they trusted her. She knew all but never told it.”

“She might have made an exception this time to get justice for her dear cousins or vengeance against her hated enemy.”

“Hated enemy?” he echoed. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

“I asked if she regretted his passing. She said that
not
regretting it would—quoting here—‘be unchristian of me, wouldn’t it? I’ve been a good Christian my entire life. God will forgive me this lapse.’”

It sounded just like Miss Viola. Of course God would forgive her for hating Jeremiah. She’d felt pretty certain that God Himself was none too fond of that particular reptile on His earth.

He envisioned the lower floor of the house, hidden now by cornstalks, and imagined the people working inside: a homicide detective, maybe more, a crime scene team, someone from the coroner’s office. A lot of people expending a lot of time in a city where deaths and crimes were always waiting for attention. Turning, he fixed his gaze on Alia. “Do you think she was murdered?”

She pressed her lips together, rubbing off what little lipstick remained there. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“But you have an idea.”

Evasively she looked toward the house, as he had, but her gaze followed the lines of empty windows marching in order across the second and third floors before turning back to him. “She told me yesterday that she doesn’t go upstairs, just as you said. And yet this morning I found her lying at the foot of the steps, with one of her slippers lying askew halfway up the stairs, leaving the appearance that she fell.”

Or was forced up and pushed down again. Carried up and thrown down. The how of it wasn’t important to Landry. It was the why.
Why
would anyone hurt Miss Viola?

Alia folded her hands in her lap and changed the subject. “I’ve known a few people in my life who practically qualified for sainthood, but even they had frenemies.” She gave the made-up word a sardonic twist. “People they were friendly but argued with. What about Miss Viola?”

Landry rubbed the ache in his temple. Too little sleep, too much drama, too much bright sun and loud noises and ugly thoughts. He needed the cool quiet of his bedroom for a few days, at least until Jeremiah had been planted in the family tomb.

“The only person I ever heard say anything bad about her was Jeremiah. They hadn’t had any contact with each other since—” He clenched his jaw shut on the words.

“Since you left home.”

He refused to answer.

Now Alia was watching him, curiosity in her eyes. “I’ve known some kids who left at home at fifteen, sixteen. I’ve investigated a few others. I even considered it a couple times myself, back in the day. But in my experience, it was never such a big deal that family members stopped speaking because of it, especially when it was a well-known fact that the kid was okay. So why are you different? What was special about your leaving home?”

He watched the cornstalks sway in a lazy breeze. Miss Viola had put the chairs back in this corner because, she swore, under the right conditions, the corn grew so fast that a body could actually hear it. He didn’t hear anything right now but the heavy cadence of his heart and Alia’s even breathing.

“There was nothing special about it. I’d had enough, and I moved out.” Miss Viola had helped him rent a tiny apartment in a French Quarter building owned by a friend of hers and had continued to give him money until he was grown. For a runaway, he’d had it damn good.

The only thing special was that at the same time, she’d coerced Camilla and Jeremiah into sending Mary Ellen to a boarding school in Europe.

“Where was the admiral stationed at the time?”

“He’d just come back here. He’d pulled some strings to be close to his family.”

Between the two of them, he and Miss Viola had made the string-pulling all for nothing, and Jeremiah had hated them since. Had it ever bothered him that neither of them had given a damn?

Abruptly Alia gestured to Landry’s clothes. “You have an appointment?”

“Funeral home,” he said shortly.

“I can accompany you. We can talk on the way.”

“I’ve got nothing else to tell you.”

As she stood, she smiled, a professional kind of smile, not insincere, exactly, but not really sincere, either. “Then you shouldn’t mind the company.”

* * *

After checking in with Jimmy, Alia left the Fulsom mansion for the last time with a deep sense of relief. The house she had admired yesterday was cold today, less welcoming, more intimidating. Miss Viola’s imprint was everywhere, which made the fact that she was dead more chilling.

The fact that she likely had been murdered...

“Don’t you fidget?”

She glanced at Landry. He was sprawled in the driver’s seat, his right wrist resting at the top of the steering wheel, with his left arm on the window frame, his fingers tapping a quiet rhythm to music only he heard.

“You prefer your passengers on the hyperactive side?”

“No. But you’re awfully still. And quiet.”

“Next time I can ask Detective DiBiase to accompany you. He’s never still
or
quiet.”

Half a block passed before he asked, “How long were you married?”

Alia stiffened, looked at him, out the window, then back at him. It wasn’t a deep secret. Pretty much everyone in her life knew, including a fair number of people she’d investigated. The NCIS and local law enforcement communities were close-knit, and word got around.

Still, heat warmed the skin at the base of her throat. “Three years.”

“And in that whole time, you didn’t try to kill him.”

“No.” In a softer voice, she added, “Though there were times...”

Landry smiled. It was a really good look on him. Good enough to make a woman spend extra time checking him out. She imagined on a warm evening, when relentless rain had put a dint in the Quarter’s usual nightlife, a woman looking for a good time knew she’d found it when she walked into his bar and he welcomed her with that smile.